"Where are You?"

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This is video and performance installation about the effects of memory loss leading to dementia.  Inspired by my mother’s battle with dementia and my own fear of losing my memory this is a project that investigates the creative deterioration and dissociation experienced when one’s daily life starts to break down.  As my mother’s actual world became more foreign, she increasingly identified with the television set as the basis for her reality.  With sound and visuals I explore and combine the every day worlds of both my mother’s, and myself mashing chronological time into other order. Despite the confusion and disintegration another resonance is apparent.  Like the river I grew up on there is a consistency that stills the disconnectedness.

One November winter day, in 2010, I came home exhausted and saw the chaos of dishes in my kitchen sink as reflective of my state of mind.  I was curious to see what correlations I could find with my mother's, through the disintegration of her everyday life caused by the onslaught of dementia.  Her only solace appeared to be with the river that ran behind our house.  Every day for a year I took photos of my kitchen sink, which I then overlayed with all of the different bodies of water (the river I grew up on, as well as other rivers and the ocean) that I have lived on, or near to,  from the west coast to the east.

I can't Remember

Installations of woodblock prints inspired by MRI brain scans.

Brain Books

Losing one’s memory is a scary thought.  To witness someone close to you with dementia or Alzheimer’s is very disturbing.  Many of us fear losing our memory whether we have a family history of dementia, or not.  For most of us this fear is ungrounded.   We are horrified to imagine what it would be like to no longer recognize those we love and all that is familiar in our lives.  Memories give our life value and are a source of reference.  Having dementia is like tearing out, throwing away and mixing up this reference source.

Through acknowledging and exploring the issues that hold us in fear we often overcome the fear, itself.   I would like to explore the idea of dementia without the terror it conjures up.  Can we approach dementia as another way of relating to the world by delving into the unthinkable?

Remembrances and connections have been made by creative healing techniques in dementia care. Sometimes a relevant life event can be recalled by stimulating the senses through certain odors, sounds and visuals.

This is a series of three books that will explore the visual aspect of the brain and memory decomposition and a redefining of the dementia, memory loss experience. I also want to stimulate other ways of thinking about how we process and search for the familiar even in deconstructive, unfamiliar states.

The Chain Link Divide

The Chain Link Divide

I’ve been fascinated by the controversy involving the active opening and closing of the chain link fence on the railway, close to where I live in Montreal.  This crossing had been generously left open for 30 years or more until the summer of 2009 when suddenly and unexpectedly the CPR blocked the community’s “short cut” across the tracks.  There was no explanation and no warning.  Overnight there was no longer access.

Hundreds of people use this crossing regularly; it is direct and safe and also connects to one of the best bike paths that cross the city west to east.  No sooner had the opening(s) been closed than someone had clipped the fencing open again. It was then sealed shut again with more reinforced strategically placed steel pipes.  Still the <cutters> found their way through a section of the fence again, and this <war> has continued on like this for over a year now.  It was left open for the summer but now another critical section has been reinforced shut.  The CPR has also been fining people and a petition has been started www.PetitionOnline.com/ouvert02/, as of Oct 14^th 2010, 792 people have signed it.

This inspired me to do my own form of chain link fencing and to place it strategically in a passageway that people would not expect to be obstructed.  However, there will be a way through my digital and intaglio printed fencing without having to use metal cutters. I want to create a dialogue with the Concordia community, how do we react when previously accessible areas appear not to be so.  When do we still try to find a way through and when do we turn back, angry and discouraged. 

Our society is surrounded by chain link fences, keeping people in, keeping people out, containing areas of land, buildings, etc.  Do we ever consider why this protection is so necessary? Chain link fencing, dating back to the late 1800’s,[1] has now become so innocuously prevalent in our society that we seldom consider its relevance anymore. This is an opportunity to do so.

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[1] Anchor Fence Co., Inc. – History. Anchor Post Fence Co. was the first to manufacture and install chain link fencing in the USA in 1891. Web 14 Oct 2010.

Recipes for Life on the River, 2011

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Family and ancestry keep popping up in my work in sometimes surprising circumstances.  A digital print book of fragmented images morphed into a story about my brother and a large print “can you drink this blood of your blind regrets?” uncannily foreshadowed my sister’s aneurism.  Some Super 8 footage surfaced from my mother’s closest friend after her death last year at 96.  I’ve used archival footage before in my work and was immediately drawn to work with this more personal imagery.

Life has its way of pulling you into the flow whether you are conscious of it, or not.  It is no accident that Emily LeBlanc approached me with her grandmother’s recipes and what resulted was our multi-faceted collaboration, Recipes for Life on the River.  So far we have explored elements of performance and have created an artist book but this project is still flowing.